Founded in 1792 by Reverend John Stuart based upon a grant for secondary education in the colony of Upper Canada, it moved to its location at 235 Frontenac Street in 1892.
[citation needed] When KCVI closed in December 2020, its student population moved to Kingston Secondary School, a new school constructed on the former QECVI site that was created to replace both KCVI and QECVI as the result of a Program and Accommodation Review Committee decision reached in 2014.
[6] Finally, with the addition of a technical and commercial teaching wing in 1931, the school was renamed Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI), the name it retained until its closure.
The school competed in various sports including, but not limited to: rowing, cross-country, track and field, football, chess club, advanced chicken plucking, rugby, hockey, basketball, volleyball, soccer, mountain biking, curling, Ping-Pong, tennis, badminton, baseball, golf, swimming, and skiing, along with various other sports.
[citation needed] A new coat of arms was formally conferred on KCVI by Ray Hnatyshyn, then Governor General of Canada, in 1992.
The Latin motto, maxima debetur pueris reverentia, can be roughly translated to "Youth are entitled to the greatest respect".
[citation needed] The KCVI DECA chapter's performance at the 2014 International Career Development Conference in Atlanta, Georgia was its best to that point, taking home over 20 medals and 3 trophies.
[11] K-Botics was an extracurricular program at the school where students design and build a robot from scratch to participate in a game created by FIRST.
They provide on-site secondary education for students aged primarily 16–20 who require an alternative setting for earning high school credits.
[15] There were a variety of programs that prepared students for different destinations post-graduation: university, college, apprenticeships, and direct entry into the workplace.
The committee focused on investigating the advantages and disadvantages of closing select Kingston high schools that were under-enrolled or over-budget.
KCVI was reviewed as a problematic institution by the committee due to the school's crumbling infrastructure and high annual overhead.
[citation needed] The discussion of closing KCVI caused a large disruption among its students, alumni and parents, and opposition to the closure gained support from the community, resulting in the formation of the group "Save Kingston City Schools".
Many Kingston residents supported the group and its cause by posting promotional signs on their lawns and partaking in social media campaigns using Facebook.
[22] In late September 2017, KCVI marked its 225th anniversary with a large-scale reunion event before the final closure of the school, which was planned at that time for 2019.
[24] By April 2020, it had become clear that KSS would not be ready to open by September of that year, due in part to the provincially-mandated halt on construction imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.